How to Extend 3D Hair in Cinema 4D Without Losing Shape: Ornatrix Tutorial

How to Extend 3D Hair in Cinema 4D Without Losing Shape: Ornatrix Tutorial

Welcome to another Charly Tutors grooming guide. Today we are diving into a common issue every 3D artist faces when working with hair simulation and grooming pipelines in Maxon Cinema 4D.

The Pain: Unnaturally Straight Hair Ends

If you have ever tried to increase the overall length of your grooms in 3D, you know the struggle. You spend hours brushing and styling the perfect flow, but the moment you tweak the "Strand Length" parameter, the ends shoot out completely straight. They start looking like stiff wires, and you instantly lose the entire dynamic curve of the hairstyle.

The Solution: Curved Extension in the Length Operator

To fix this natively within Ornatrix for Cinema 4D, we need to look inside the Length Operator. Instead of manually adjusting vertices or completely rebuilding the guides from scratch, there is a simple checkbox that changes the game - the "Curved Extension" option.

  • Smart Math: When activated, the Ornatrix algorithm stops linearly extending the vector. Instead, it mathematically analyzes the current curvature of the strand and seamlessly continues its natural shape.
  • Universal Application: This method works flawlessly and equally well on both your base guides and the final output of dense hair.

By using this tool, your 3D character's hair retains a natural, organic look, saving you hours of manual grooming fixes.

Watch the Full Video Tutorial



Hardware Setup: Computing Millions of Strands in Real-Time

Calculating the geometry and viewport display for millions of dense hair strands in Cinema 4D requires an uncompromising workstation. For my daily 3D grooming and plugin development pipeline, I rely entirely on the MSI Titan 18 HX AI.

Under the hood, this laptop packs the desktop-class NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 with 24 GB of next-gen GDDR7 memory (175W TDP) and a massive 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX processor clocking up to 5.5 GHz. This sheer computing power lets me manipulate ultra-dense grooming setups directly in the C4D viewport without any lag.

Additionally, having 96 GB of DDR5 5600 MHz RAM is an absolute lifesaver. It allows me to keep heavy Unreal Engine 5 scenes open in the background while I groom, seamlessly switching tasks between my Samsung Ultrawide (3440x1440) work monitor and the stunning native 18" UHD+ Mini-LED display.

Useful Links & Resources

What is your biggest struggle when styling 3D hair? Drop a comment below

Comments

Post a Comment